Original subtitles

[man speaking]

[theme music playing]

Welcome to Very Scary People.

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Miami in the '90s,

it was a time and place where glamour and money

influenced its residents.

But there was also a dark side to this sun-drenched city.

Brutal and grotesque crimes are being committed

by a crew of bodybuilders,

wannabes, and misfits.

Their violence is fueled by greed,

and later became the subject of a Hollywood comedy.

But there is nothing funny about this crew.

This is the Sun Gym Sadists.

[man] Bodies that were found,

dismembered and stuffed into 55-gallon drums,

that were then thrown into South Florida canals.

These guys have two dead bodies.

"How are we gonna get rid of them?"

They want to get rid of the parts of their body that can identify them.

Decapitate them.

And remove the victims'

hands and feet.

And they start prying and axing the face

to get all of the teeth out.

And then they take the hands and they're...

grilling them like a barbecue.

This is a human being.

Look what they did.

To do these things that they did,

they're evil people.

[woman 1] I was watching the news,

and all of a sudden I see

mugshots

of Danny Lugo

and Adrian Doorbal.

And I about fell over.

I couldn't believe it.

I was just...

I was just in total shock.

In the '90s,

Miami was all about...

[engine roaring]

...fast cars, and money, and jewelry,

and good-looking people,

and models, and parties.

South Beach was a nightclub type of

beautiful place.

It was the place to be.

Everybody

walks around in shorts

and tank tops and bikinis and...

So fitness is

super important.

[Donnie] That wild and wealthy South Beach lifestyle

is exactly what 25-year-old Danny Lugo

is looking for.

Danny Lugo was a transplanted New Yorker

who came to Florida.

[Andrea] Danny was handsome.

He always took care of how he looked.

He had charisma.

Danny was one of those people

that I could see

conning somebody into something

very easily.

[woman 2] But I think Danny Lugo

suffered from some self-esteem issues,

some wanting to belong, some feeling of inadequacy.

He grew up quite poor.

So, reportedly he had a lisp.

That's got to be real difficult,

especially if you're a beefy guy

and you're supposed to be tough.

And, you know, a lisp tends to

make people make different kinds of associations about you.

It just sounds like Lugo had

some resentments and some desires

to belong as well,

coming from his background.

Danny had probably

a little bit atypical life

at home. It certainly wasn't Leave It to Beaver.

There were money problems between his parents.

His father had a temper and his father drank,

which made it not a perfect childhood.

[woman 3] His dad could get abusive.

There was an incident where

he poured a big plate of spaghetti

over his head because Danny didn't want to eat it.

[Laura] Being a child of an alcoholic

puts a lot of stress on a kid.

You've got to be

the achiever in the family.

You've got to make it big

so that we can be comfortable, too.

[Gail] Danny portrayed himself

as the person that could bring wealth to the family,

and actually got admitted

to Fordham University in New York.

And he did very well,

except for one thing.

He didn't keep track of his credits.

He was between four and six credits short

of his bachelor's degree.

Well, for Danny, that just wasn't going to stand.

He was getting that degree,

and he wanted that degree,

and he wasn't gonna take any summer courses

and he wasn't gonna take any fall courses.

He was graduating that June,

or he was quitting.

So he quit.

Danny was the star of the family.

When he didn't get that degree,

there was some level

of disappointment in him.

[Laura] That pressure can make you work really hard.

It can also sometimes maybe backfire

and make you

cut corners to get ahead.

[telephone ringing]

[Donnie] Fordham was a bust,

so Danny decides to start fresh in Miami.

What he did was try to be

a businessman

and offer up loans.

He would get people to give him

the down payment for the loan

and then he'd never give them the loan.

And he racked up

tens of thousands of dollars doing that.

I don't think there's anything on this Earth

that man wouldn't do for money.

Of course, these people went to the police

and he was federally arrested.

He got a two-year federal prison sentence

and he was sent to a white-collar prison camp,

where he spent his time working out

and probably talking to other

white-collar criminals.

[Donnie] 29-year-old Danny

is released from prison early,

having served only 15 months

of his original two-year sentence.

[Alex] Lugo was coming off of his federal conviction.

He was on probation

and looking for a place to work.

Being a bodybuilder, he approached

John Mese.

John Mese was kind of

a lifetime bodybuilder,

very involved in bodybuilding competitions.

He had a bodybuilding business

that he was trying to grow.

So he purchased a place called Sun Gym.

[Alex] Sun Gym seemed to be

a place where

a lot of seedy people worked out.

[Gail] Where in the locker room, you could freely use steroids

and not get in trouble.

[Laura] Sun Gym definitely became

what we would think about as criminal culture,

in that everybody there got some hustle going on.

[Gail] The equipment is expensive,

and John

was competing with places like Gold's Gym,

LA Fitness.

And it started to really drain

his income.

[Alex] Lugo sold him basically on

all these ideas he had he thought

would make the gym grow.

Danny was born to sell.

He was born

to get people to like him.

And he really just learned

to listen to people

to know where their weak spots were.

He had a natural talent.

[Donnie] Lugo uses that talent

to sell memberships at the gym

and to recruit a new partner in crime.

[Sal] Adrian Doorbal had come to

Miami, Florida

in the early '90s from Trinidad.

[Atilla] Adrian did not really talk about much

of his background.

[Donnie] Attila Weiland lives outside the United States,

too terrified to return

after the events of this story.

[Atilla] He told me that

originally he was from Jamaica.

I knew it was a lie,

but, you know, who am I to judge?

Maybe he was shameful

to be from Trinidad, I don't know.

I have been to where

Doorbal grew up,

and he grew up in probably

the poorest place I've ever been to in the world.

He had a really horrible

initial existence.

His mother was raped by the next-door neighbor

when she birthed him at 15 years old.

She was not able to care for a baby at that age.

So his grandmother

raised him like a son.

He believed until his late teens

that his mother was his sister.

So when he started working at a young age,

he thought his sister was stealing his money.

[Laura] It shapes an idea in your head that, like,

anybody will take money in whatever way they can,

even my own family. So,

is it so big a deal if I do that?

Adrian Doorbal was somebody

that wanted to be loved,

that wanted to be respected.

None of which he received from his mom.

When Adrian was 18,

he went to America.

He wanted to make a life

in the United States.

[Andrea] I knew Adrian Doorbal

from working at a fitness center

in Miami.

My first impression of Adrian

was that he was very humble.

And he was very gentle.

He wasn't making a lot of money.

I think Adrian was looking for people to look up to.

And I think he needed

a mentor.

He had aspirations to become

a bodybuilder, and hopefully

make some money in that way.

[man grunting]

[Andrea] He needed people that

were going to help him succeed

in getting what he wanted.

That's how he got with Danny.

[Laura] Doorbal and Danny

bonded around similar backgrounds

of deprivation,

shame, humiliation,

expectation that you want something that you

don't see how you're gonna achieve legitimately.

They kind of balanced each other

around that kind of common background of

lack of self-worth.

[man grunting]

[Laura] And so sometimes, as a result of that,

people adapt to it...

by committing horrible acts.

[man grunting]

[Andrea] Danny made Adrian feel like

he could

be successful

and have whatever he wanted.

Danny had Doorbal come to the gym.

[man grunting]

[Gail] Doorbal started getting bigger and bigger.

Now Doorbal's winning contests.

Mr. America contest.

People are coming in, they want to train with Doorbal.

[Donnie] Adrian Doorbal brings in new clients.

But selling gym memberships one at a time

isn't gonna cut it for Danny Lugo.

He wants big money fast.

Money became important to these men

partly because they didn't have a lot,

but also the Miami context,

where you're surrounded by the glitz and glamour

of the Miami lifestyle,

and they're seeing this and they're wanting that.

Danny was looking for a fraud business,

but he didn't have one.

Then Jorge Delgado

drives up to Sun Gym

because he's skinny

and he'd like to build himself up.

So he joined Sun Gym.

And immediately,

Danny sees he's got the Mercedes.

How does a guy like that

get that kind of car?

Now, if you've ever had a personal trainer,

sometimes you know that

they become your confidant.

Danny got to know him.

And he got inside his head.

And he started to find out, this guy has a business

that I want.

[Laura] He probably carried a lot of weight of

not having money.

[man groaning]

When you are in a city like Miami,

you're butting up against somebody who's got all this money.

That's tough on the psyche.

-[man groaning] -[electricity crackling]

[man screaming]

[Gail] Jorge Delgado was a ne'er-do-well.

He was never gonna be anybody.

He's a skinny guy

that married a smart girl.

That girl

was able to

work herself up into being

Marc Schiller's assistant.

Marc Schiller was a Colombian National Argentinian born.

He met his wife in Colombia.

He then came to the United States

and opened up a pretty good

CPA practice himself.

He also owned a Schlotzky's Deli.

And he was

on the side

running a Medicare fraud business.

[man] Medicare fraud is a very common

criminal activity.

You are billing the federal government

for services

that were never provided.

The allure of Medicare fraud

is that you're making millions of dollars,

and greed drives the train.

[Donnie] As a favor to Mrs. Delgado,

Schiller hires Jorge and mentors him.

Eventually,

taking him on as a business partner.

But everything changes

once Jorge becomes friends with Danny Lugo.

Jorge is enthralled with Danny.

I mean, this is like a new best friend.

So Danny says, "I want to meet Marc Schiller."

'Cause Marc was worth a lot of money.

Schiller not only represents financially the success

that Danny wants and the home and the yard

-and the cars and the life. -[engine roaring]

[Laura] Schiller is making his fraud work.

Oh, you got caught for yours.

He represents the dream that you're looking for.

So they meet.

But Marc

has a sixth sense.

And he knows Danny's bad news.

[Alex] Delgado introduced Lugo to Schiller.

Meets him a couple times.

Hears his voice. Knows his lisp.

Schiller immediately got this vibe and said,

"I don't like this guy.

There's something bad about this guy."

And even gave Delgado an ultimatum.

"It's me or him.

You either do business with him

or you do business with me."

He picked wrong.

So Jorge and Danny,

they started doing their own medical fraud.

The thing of it was that they couldn't really break in

to the amount of money that Marc was making.

It didn't really annoy Jorge.

Jorge was happy with what he had.

But this annoyed Danny.

So Danny started

laying the groundwork.

In his lying way, he told Jorge,

"I've been through your books.

And I know Marc has stolen from you.

You were never an equal partner.

He threw you crumbs.

You got basically nothing.

We have to get him back."

And it soured Jorge on Marc.

And it also excited him

that somebody's sticking up for him.

Jorge had no self-esteem.

So what anybody told him to do, he did.

And he was willing to do

anything to get back at Marc.

[Donnie] Lugo convinces Delgado

they need to shake down Schiller

and get the money he's owed.

But he'll need help.

And the Sun Gym is the perfect place to find it.

First, of course,

Danny has Doorbal.

Doorbal's gonna be a strong man.

And this is great for Doorbal.

[man grunting]

[Andrea] Danny knew that

Adrian was vulnerable

and that he could manipulate him

to do whatever he wanted him to do,

because he knew that Adrian

wanted to have nice things.

"And you know that guy Weekes

that you said wanted to be the janitor?

Bring him."

[Carl speaking]

[Donnie] Because of his involvement with the Sun Gym gang,

Carl Weekes has been deported to Barbados

and is barred from reentering the United States.

[Gail] Danny had a way

of talking to people

in a tone that made people go,

"Wow, that sounds great. Of course."

He was definitely thinking,

"I can make a lot of money here."

So Danny goes, "We're kidnapping him."

[Alex] They come up with several

different approaches,

each of which, I should say, is dumber than the one before.

The first approach is

they decided to dress up as ninjas

and hide in his yard,

because they've been surveilling him

and they realize he comes out every morning at 5:00 a.m.

in the dark to get the newspaper.

But they realize that

as cars are coming down the street,

the headlights are lighting them up

and they're just completely exposed.

So they start running

through the yards back to the van,

yelling on their headset,

"Abort, abort."

Like this was some kind of SEAL Team 6 mission.

So that was a failure.

So they come up with another plan.

[Carl speaking]

[tires screeching]

[Carl speaking]

Now they have to have another plan, 'cause they're not giving up.

They've just got to find the right way to kidnap him.

[Donnie] Danny Lugo's team of misfits

hasn't laid a hand on their target,

Marc Schiller.

So they try a new tactic.

[Gail] They get a Taser.

In those days, the tasers were as big as

the old brick cell phones.

And they didn't have the wand.

You had to actually touch the skin.

Let me tell you something,

that's a serious shock.

[Alex] They decide they're just gonna pull up next to his car

at this Schlotzky's Deli that he owns.

And when he comes up,

they're gonna tase him,

pull him into the car,

and kidnap him.

[Gail] They knew that every day he went to the deli,

and it's open from, like, 9:00 to 3:00.

Doorbal and Weekes lie in wait in the parking lot.

Danny's not there. They're there.

[Sal] Adrian and Carl Weekes

threw moving blankets on him.

They put on duct tape

all around his eyes and nose.

[Alex] So they kidnap Schiller,

and they take him over to this warehouse.

The warehouse that he was brought to was owned by...

Jorge Delgado.

[Gail] Doorbal calls Danny.

[telephone ringing]

[Gail] And Doorbal says,

"The eagle has landed."

[line disconnects]

Lugo was a big kid.

He was about 6'2", 250.

But, you know, to hear him talk,

he didn't have

a deep voice

to go with

the build that

you would think someone like that might have.

Danny was not embarrassed about

anything he ever did.

Except for one thing.

His lisp.

[Carl speaking]

Danny had a very pronounced lisp.

Marc knew the lisp.

[Gail] This Colombian guy,

he sells drugs to children near schools.

They were able to talk themselves into the fact that

Schiller was a horrible guy.

So I think that they just used this

to convince themselves that he's not

somebody we should even care about.

We want what he's got,

but we don't care about him as a person.

[man grunting]

Lugo and the others...

wanted to get into the house

and take all his assets.

So the first thing they need him to do

is to tell his wife, "Get out of town.

Get yourself, the kids,

go home to Colombia."

"Don't call the police. Don't call anybody."

[Gail] Let his wife know

maybe some of his money wasn't clean.

So she did exactly what he said.

So no missing persons report was filed.

[Donnie] The gang had assumed

Schiller would be an easy shakedown

and they'd become rich overnight.

But after getting his wife and kids to safety,

Schiller refuses to give them more information.

And it catches them off guard.

[Gail] Now they got a problem.

They thought this was gonna be like a day, a day and a half.

They don't expect a fightback.

So now they have to keep him.

"We're getting some handcuffs. We're gonna handcuff him to the chair."

"What happens if he has to go to the bathroom?"

"We'll give him a bucket."

[Donnie] The Sun Gym Gang

begins to torture Marc Schiller

into revealing where he keeps his important documents.

And guided by Schiller's old friend

and partner, Jorge Delgado,

they break into Schiller's empty house

a few days after his kidnapping

and grab everything they need

to take over his finances and his life.

So he is now kidnapped.

His wife is out of the country.

The house is empty.

And nobody knows what's going on.

[Gail] Nobody knew Marc was missing.

Nobody's looking for Marc.

[revolver clicks]

And that's just how the Sun Gym Gang wants it.

They don't expect Marc Schiller to put up a fight.

But when he does, they beat him into submission.

And when they eventually get him to sign over everything he owns,

there's no telling how far they'll go

to make sure he never gets it back

and never tells a soul.

[Donnie] Lugo's violent gang of jacked-up thugs

has the paperwork they need

to steal Marc Schiller's fortune.

But they still need him to sign it over.

[man groaning]

-[electricity crackling] -[man groaning]

[Alex] He's completely blindfolded.

They would put blank checks in front of him,

they'd put his hand on the check and say, "Sign."

And he would go...

And they would put another paper.

Deed for his house.

[man groaning]

[Alex] Another paper.

The deed for his condo.

[man groaning]

Another paper.

[man groaning]

His car.

[Carl speaking]

They were trying to figure out all the different things they could take,

and how they could take them.

Transfer of assets has to be notarized,

you know, you can't just

sign a paper and give away your house.

There has to be a notary

verifying that this is not a fraud.

Well, John Mese was a notary.

[Donnie] John Mese, Danny Lugo's boss

and the owner of the Sun Gym.

[Jude] At the time,

the height of security

was having a notary.

Somebody claiming that they saw

the person sign this and it was witnessed.

There was no

fraud department necessarily

at your bank that was going to question a notary.

So that was the key step for Lugo.

[Alex] John Mese is basically being brought all these signed documents

and he's notarizing

all of the signatures on the condo

and on the home and all this stuff.

Depriving Schiller of everything.

[Gail] Marc's beautiful home

now belongs to Danny.

Some corporation, of course,

that they conjured up.

[Jude] At this point in Lugo's fraud evolution,

he seems to have figured out certain steps

that are necessary if you're gonna be a fraudster.

One of which being setting up a shell corporation.

Somewhere where you can park this wealth

that it's not gonna call attention to it.

[man groaning]

[electricity crackling]

[Donnie] As they wait for all the transfers

of Schiller's assets to completely clear,

the gang now tortures him mercilessly.

Just for fun.

[electricity crackling]

[Alex] He was being burned with lighters.

Being pistol whipped.

Having gun barrels shoved into his mouth.

Treated worse than probably a prisoner of war.

[man groaning]

They had him drink

nasty water.

He urinated in his clothing.

Essentially, it's a type of dehumanizing of Schiller.

Talking themselves into believing that Schiller's

got what they should deserve.

[Sal] Adrian was

hitting him the most.

Being the most abusive to him.

[man groaning]

I think Doorbal especially felt very emasculated.

You know, if you started working at 12

and you're like, "I've been working all my life

and I still don't have much.

And this dude over here,

he's doing great."

Like, I could see where that would build resentment.

He started using violence

and that gave him that sense of power.

They're punching him

like he's a punching bag at the gym.

And when I say they...

[man panting]

[man groaning]

...I believe it was Doorbal.

He's just an evil person.

[Andrea] I've seen steroids affect

people's personalities

a lot.

And I do believe that

he may have started taking them.

[Gail] Steroids build up in your system

and it makes you

more and more aggressive.

[man groaning]

[Laura] I think Adrian probably did that to please Danny.

I think he maybe even did more

than what Danny was asking for him...

[muffled screaming]

[Laura] ...and got carried away.

[Atilla] Adrian was obsessed with Danny.

Anything he said

or instructed him to do,

he was such a follower

when it came to Danny.

[Laura] It could be the first time he felt safe

to explore violence with

seemingly no consequence.

[Carl speaking]

[Donnie] Once Mese notarizes the documents

and the bank stamps their approval,

Lugo and Doorbal

start to cash in on Schiller's assets,

about two weeks into his captivity.

[Alex] They start living on Schiller's property,

wearing his watch,

his Presidential Rolex watch,

wearing all his jewelry.

They're now driving around in a $100,000 Mercedes.

I can definitely see Lugo and Doorbal being

people who felt like nobodies most of their lives.

And then all of a sudden they feel like somebody.

[Andrea] I ran into Adrian

in the parking lot of Sun Gym.

He had

a nice watch.

He had a nice ring.

He had some nice clothing.

And he told me that he was doing very well at Sun Gym.

I was very happy that he had finally gotten

some of the things that he wanted and that he was

attaining some of his goals.

Little did I know that

at that time there was a guy tied to a pipe

in a warehouse,

signing away his fortune.

[electricity crackling]

For weeks, while Schiller was in captivity,

he was trying desperately to figure out who this was.

Listening, trying to get a cue from something.

Schiller's realizing they're asking a combination for the safe.

How do they know about the safe?

And he realizes Delgado's the only one who knows about

the safe other than him and his wife.

So that makes him come to the realization

that this friend,

who he helped in a time of need,

is involved in his kidnapping.

They would always talk

outside the hearing distance

of Marc

in an anteroom of this warehouse.

But Marc would listen very carefully

and he heard the lisp.

Danny had a kind of lisp

when he spoke.

Similar to Mike Tyson.

Now he knows that Lugo

and Delgado

are heading up this kidnapping.

[Donnie] The Sun Gym Gang has tortured Schiller for weeks.

The time it's taken for most of his assets

to transfer over to them.

The original plan

was to ship Marc off to Colombia.

But then

Delgado remembers something

that changes the plan.

Jorge Delgado knew he had a two million dollar life insurance policy

for his wife.

[Alex] So they're having him call his lawyer to say he found

a girl that he's in love with and he's leaving his wife.

[Donnie] Lugo plans to have Schiller

designate a new life insurance beneficiary.

They use the name Lillian Torres, which was

Danny's first wife who he still maintained contact with.

Why? 'Cause Danny knew

Lillian was gullible.

And he could tell Lillian, "Sign this paper."

She'll sign it blindly.

[Sal] They had him

sign over

his life insurance policy.

[Gail] After they had the life insurance signed,

after they knew where all the accounts were,

after everything,

approximately four weeks' time...

everybody's tired of dealing with Marc.

So

they're gonna have to kill him.

[Donnie] Everything Marc Schiller once had

now belongs to the Sun Gym Sadists.

There's only one thing left on their to-do list.

-[electricity crackling] -[man groaning]

[Laura] They make the leap

between the kidnap and torture and murder

because they just have gotten so far into it

that they saw no other alternative.

Just get rid of him

and have him not be able to ever tell anybody anything that had happened.

[Donnie] Lugo and Doorbal

come up with a plan to stage Marc's suicide.

[Gail] "Well, let's make him look like a drunk.

Cops hate drunks.

We'll make it look like he killed himself in a DUI."

[Alex] They start giving him alcohol to drink.

He's not a drinker, but now he is.

And they have him call his wife in Colombia.

And his wife puts

his eight-year-old son on the phone.

And his eight-year-old son says to him,

"Daddy, when are you coming back?"

And he says, "Soon."

He knows they're gonna kill him.

And he's talking to his son for the last time

and telling him, "I'll be home soon."

This was one of the most impactful moments for me.

Because he knows he's never gonna see his son again.

After he finishes that call...

they're feeding him alcohol and they give him

something else to drink.

He doesn't know what it is,

but it makes his mind swim.

And he falls on the floor.

They brought his Toyota 4Runner

to the warehouse.

They strap him in

in the passenger seat.

And they drive to some warehouse area

near Miami International Airport.

[Carl speaking]

[brakes screech]

[crashing]

[horn honking]

[Carl speaking]

[tires screeching]

"Run him down, run him down."

[engine revving]

And they hit him. Boom.

Then he says, "Hit him again."

And they go back over his body.

He drives, goes over him twice. You know, "Make sure he's dead.

Make sure he's dead."

And then they're about to go over him again

when they see some headlights

approaching down a side street.

And so they tear away before the car can get

within sight.

[monitor beeping]

[Gail] Marc Schiller woke up in the hospital.

He knows something horrible has happened to him.

-[man groaning] -[electricity crackling]

He remembered all of his captivity.

But he has no idea how he got...

from the warehouse to the hospital.

When he woke up, he's a human zipper.

He's cut from his chest to his groin

and he has no spleen.

[Sal] Schiller had a broken pelvis,

rib fractures, a broken leg.

He was a mess.

I would get stuck by a pencil

and I would die of lead poisoning.

This guy Schiller gets lit on fire,

-hit with a car... -[man grunts]

...backed over, and he's still alive.

-[monitor beeping] -[Gail] Schiller then asks the nurse,

the nurse says, "You were in a DUI accident."

He says, "No."

He immediately starts trying to get the nurse

to give him a phone,

so he can call his lawyer

so he can stop the transfers of whatever they're taking.

But the nurse doesn't believe it.

The nurse just says, "You're drunk and you hit a pole,"

and just walks away.

And it's driving him crazy.

He's laying in this bed, trying to tell somebody.

And he doesn't call the police

because he knew the police would ask

too many questions about his money

and he wanted his money back.

They're not going to care so much

about getting the money back,

especially if they think the money is dirty.

Finally, he convinces a nurse

-to give him a phone and he calls his lawyer. -[telephone ringing]

[Alex] And he tells his lawyer what happened.

And his lawyer says, "I knew something was up.

It didn't sound like you."

He says, "You're not safe in the hospital."

[Gail] His attorney says,

"They're gonna find you in that hospital.

You better get out of there."

The Sun Gym gang doesn't know that Marc Schiller survived.

But once they find out,

they'll be determined to finish what they started.

But the money they took from Schiller

won't last long.

To keep living like Miami elite,

they'll need new victims.

And when they find those victims,

the Sun Gym Sadists will reach new depths

of violence, horror and madness.

[sirens wailing]

[Donnie] The day after they staged Marc Schiller's horrific suicide,

the Sun Gym gang assumes

they were successful in killing him.

Then they notice a problem.

The Sun Gym gang is looking through the paper,

doesn't see any reference to this accident,

so they start calling the local hospitals.

Eventually, they worked their way

to Jackson Memorial Hospital, which says,

"Oh, yeah, we have a Marc Schiller in ICU."

What Lugo and his crew was going to do,

was go to the hospital,

take Schiller out, I mean, kill him.

[Carl speaking]

[Schiller gasps]

[cracking]

[hesitates]

[door creaks]

So they're walking the halls, looking for ICU.

The crew is coming, they get to the room.

No Marc Schiller.

Schiller reached out to his sister, who lives in New York.

The sister made arrangements with air ambulance

to transfer him from Jackson Memorial Hospital

to a New York hospital.

[helicopter droning]

They just missed him.

[Alex] When he finally leaves the hospital in New York,

the first thing he does is he runs

to his wife in Colombia

because he doesn't know who the heck he can trust.

So, barely able to walk,

he gets on a flight and goes to Colombia.

[Donnie] Marc Schiller reunites with his wife and children in Colombia,

finally safe from the terror of the Sun Gym gang.

While he's in Colombia, Schiller calls Ed Du Bois.

He was a talented private investigator.

Ed Du Bois goes to work tracking down what happened.

[Donnie] While Marc Schiller works with Ed Du Bois

to try and get his assets transferred back to him,

the gang continues to spend his money like there's no tomorrow.

This group now is just wealthy.

They have a great cushion and they're going to live

the Miami vice life.

Danny, Doorbal...

They're driving around in very fancy cars,

and hanging out at Schiller's house.

[laughing]

They rent themselves some fabulous apartments

in an up and coming area called Miami Lakes.

Beautiful.

And they have all of Marc's beautiful furnishings.

It's crazy how fast these guys

blew this money on crazy stuff.

I think that being able to show

that you have that wealth

showed you made it, you know,

or at least at that moment looked like you made it.

The thing to do for these guys is go to the strip club.

Now they're not just going to go to any strip club.

They're going to go to the high-end strip club.

The place was called Solid Gold.

They feel like somebody.

They've got money, they've got stuff,

and they've got people around them that are like that.

[Gail] Danny and Doorbal.

They were high rollers.

So they had a private area in the VIP spot.

And they had their pick of the girls that they wanted.

Danny took a liking

to a Romanian woman named Sabina.

She had been a Penthouse model and she was exquisite.

She was the second runner up to Miss Romania.

Doorbal took a shining to one of the girls named Beatriz.

[Donnie] The Sun Gym gang is busy living large,

and has forgotten all about Marc Schiller,

but Schiller hasn't forgotten about them.

[Alex] Ed Du Bois has got this memo that Schiller wrote,

detailing what happened to him and who was involved.

[Donnie] Schiller might not know all the guys involved,

but he tells Du Bois about the two he does know.

His old partner, Jorge Delgado,

and Danny Lugo.

[Alex] And as Ed is looking through the paperwork,

he notices that the deed transfers

were notarized by John Carl Mese

the owner of Sun Gym,

and he actually knows Mese.

So he goes over to Mese's office, to meet with him.

He starts confronting Mese. He goes, "John,

why is your signature here notarizing these documents?"

So Mese then starts to back up

and come up with explanations and says, "You know what?

Let me just set up a meeting with Delgado

to explain what happened here."

Ed Du Bois makes contingency plans

of telling everybody,

"Hey, if anything happens to me..."

[grunts]

[crackling]

[Schiller grunts]

[punches landing]

[Alex] "This is what I'm working on,

these are the guys involved."

Knowing he's dealing with very dangerous people.

[Alex] Ed Du Bois shows up for this meeting.

Mese puts him in this office to wait

because Delgado is not there yet.

So while he's waiting in that office,

he starts looking in the garbage can.

You know, just curious.

And all of a sudden, he starts pulling out

extremely incriminating documents.

All these incriminating statements

that showed transfer of money,

into what company they were flushed through,

are sitting right there in the garbage can.

We've seen oftentimes that criminals can be smart

and then dumb at the same time.

And they discovered all these documents

in the trash, with Schiller's name on it.

I mean, come on, that's dumb.

[Donnie] Du Bois grabs the documents

and puts them in his briefcase just in time.

Delgado shows up.

They show him the memo that Schiller wrote

detailing what happened to him.

He tries to come up with some explanation,

but Du Bois is in his face.

Du Bois is going right at him.

And finally, Delgado says,

"We're not gonna talk about this anymore.

We're going to give him all of his $1.2 million back.

But we're gonna need in exchange for him

to sign a contract that says he will not go to the police

and tell them any of these allegations

that are contained in this memo."

He thinks that's going to be a legal document, by the way.

You never give up your right to go to the cops.

It's not legal.

[Alex] But, you know, these guys are not smashing the atom.

So, Du Bois says,

"Okay, sure."

Because he wants to get the money back.

[Donnie] Ed Du Bois presents the bogus contract to Schiller.

Marc's like, "That's not a good document. I don't like that document."

[Donnie] And Schiller refuses to sign.

[Alex] Schiller and Ed Du Bois decide

Lugo is never gonna give us the money back.

He's just stringing us along and stringing us along.

[Gail] So he tells his private investigator,

"Go to the police."

This private investigator, he was very well connected

in the community, very well-respected guy.

-Calls a cop that he knows. -[telephone ringing]

[Gail] And this is how the conversation goes.

[voice over phone] I have a client who's a Colombian.

"He got kidnapped for four weeks..."

[voice over phone] "And he signed over all of his stuff."

"Where is he?" "In Colombia."

[voice over phone] "Is he going to come and talk to us?"

Schiller's terrified about coming to Miami.

He knows if they see him, they're going to kill him.

And he doesn't know are the cops involved in this, you know.

So he doesn't know if it's like a connection

between Lugo and the cops.

But he agrees to come for a very short visit.

He flies in.

They go over to the Metro-Dade police's headquarters.

And they don't believe him.

They think he's just a cocaine trafficker

trying to get them to take out his competition for him.

But I can understand why.

Here's a guy who claims all this happened to him...

-[grunts] -[electricity crackling]

-[punches landing] -[electricity crackling]

[fire crackling]

And what does he do when he escapes?

He flees the country.

And then he doesn't call the police

for a month or more.

So they think this guy is full of garbage.

[Donnie] Schiller hightails it back to Colombia.

Frustrated, defeated,

and no closer to getting any of his money back.

But these guys don't have the money.

They've been living high on the hog

since they kidnapped him.

They're driving his cars,

wearing his presidential Rolex,

dropping $2,000 to $3,000 at a time of Schiller's money.

So they don't even have 1.2 million to give.

And that's when they have to start

looking for the next victim.

I think the quickness with which this gang

tried to target another person

was, yeah, indicative of a mindset of like,

"Well, this wasn't as bad as we thought it would be.

It worked, right."

But maybe they think in their minds

that we've got this plan down now, and they're jonesing.

They've been dating all these strippers from Solid Gold.

And Doorbal is sitting with his new girlfriend, Beatriz,

who's a dancer at Solid Gold,

looking through a photo album.

He sees this beautiful yellow Lamborghini.

At the time, a quarter- of-a-million-dollar car,

and he goes, "Wow. Who owns that?"

She says, "Oh, that's my ex-boyfriend Frank Griga.

He made a lot of money in 976 numbers."

Those porn phone lines that used to exist.

Frank Griga was a Hungarian immigrant.

He was a classic American immigrant story.

He came over with like 10 bucks in his pocket.

And within a few years

he had built a multi- million dollar business.

[Gail] He had met a girl named Krisztina Furton.

Krisztina had come over from Hungary also,

so they had a bond, a common bond.

She's a beautiful girl.

They were a beautiful couple.

Krisztina was like a beautiful soul

and mother-like person who was always there for you.

Frank, he was nice and friendly,

paid attention to others, listened,

said his piece, if he had something to say.

Take away the financial background,

he was just a regular guy.

And so Doorbal says, "Danny and I would like to meet him."

Money they bled from Marc Schiller is running out,

and now Frank Griga looks like the next target

for Danny Lugo and his crew.

But this time, the Sun Gym gang's extortion scheme will end

with one of the most bizarre and gruesome

crime scenes in Florida history.

[Donnie] Adrian Doorbal asked his girlfriend, Beatriz,

to get him access to Frank Griga's inner circle.

Beatriz reaches out to her my ex-husband.

Attila was his name.

He was friends with Frank.

Frank Griga made his money in the phone sex business,

so they decided they would pitch

an international calling business to him.

[Attila speaking]

Lugo and Doorbal get all suited up.

They go over to Frank Griga's house

to pitch him this business idea.

[Attila speaking]

[Donnie] Using the cover of a business transaction,

Lugo and Doorbal start setting up their real plan.

But this time with a smaller crew.

Lugo decides that only he, Doorbal, Delgado,

and Sun Gym owner John Mese will be in on the score.

So the plan, of course,

was to pretty much repeat the Schiller operation.

[person screams]

They were going to hold Frank Griga,

get everything he owned, and then...

[gunshot]

They buy duct tape,

they buy horse tranquilizer to sedate them.

They buy everything.

They don't buy masks

because there's no reason for them to hide their identity.

Because they're going to make sure that they don't survive.

Lugo and Doorbal show up at Frank's house.

Frank and Krisztina are both there.

They're going to take them out for dinner to talk about the deal.

They were going to go to dinner at Shula's.

Realize Shula's Steakhouse is actually closed that night.

So they say, "Listen, let's go for a drink or something

at Doorbal's apartment."

[Alex] Their plan is...

Doorbal is going to tell Frank,

"Let me show you the setup that we're envisioning

on the telecommunications front."

Take him into the bedroom

and incapacitate him.

While Lugo is in the living room with Krisztina.

So Lugo tells her

he's gonna show her this new sound system.

[loud thumping music playing]

The woofers are pounding and...

[music volume increases]

Even with that,

you couldn't hide...

[objects shattering]

...the struggle and fight sounds

that were coming from the bedroom.

And then Doorbal picks up something heavy and solid.

[thuds]

Cracks Frank Griga on the head.

And in attempting to...

...And in attempting to restrain Griga

Doorbal went too far and that crack to the head

basically killed him.

[Levine] Frank is not supposed to get dead in the apartment.

We're supposed to drive him to the warehouse alive,

torturing him, so that he gives us everything

so we can get into the house,

to get his computer, to get into his accounts.

And they didn't expect Doorbal to be so strong

and so violent that he killed him.

Krisztina starts screaming.

What are they gonna do with her?

Well, they're ready.

Because somehow,

somewhere,

they got something called Rompun.

It's what you give to a horse or a cow to tranquilize them

when you're in a large animal veterinarian.

[inaudible]

Now, that is an extremely painful drug when it goes in.

It's like fire.

So they shoot her with one vial of that.

Now they have his hysterical girlfriend

who they've just drugged with horse tranquilizer.

She's very doped up.

And what are they going to do now?

[Ferrer] So they take Frank's body

and they put it in the bathtub.

His blood is going down the drain

and they are huddling up and trying to figure out

what do we do now.

How are we gonna get assets?

[Levine] So Lugo and Doorbal are in Doorbal's apartment.

They have one dead body and a moaning woman.

Eventually they call Delgado and they tell him we've got a problem.

So Lugo tells Delgado what the plan is.

They're gonna take Krisztina, they're gonna get the house codes

because Frank's house has a digital keypad rather than a keylock.

Then they're gonna go in and take everything they can from the house.

They're trying to get the codes out of her

and they inject her with more horse tranquilizer.

Because every time she wakes up,

the only thing she remembers is seeing Frank getting murdered.

So she wants to see him.

[narrator] Danny Lugo races to Griga's house

and tries the codes Krisztina gave him.

It doesn't work.

So Lugo dials up Doorbal on the phone

and says, get new codes, these don't work.

So Doorbal walks over to Krisztina

and comes back to the phone and says, the bitch is cold.

[Finley] Doorbal's response that the bitch is cold,

it seems to have no empathy.

Doorbal had seemingly shifted personalities

to this really violent,

cold killer with no remorse.

There was something dormant in him

that he never had the chance to kind of practice before

and this gave him an outlet and he realized, okay, no big deal to me.

[Ferrer] And now they have two dead bodies.

No money.

[narrator] Lugo and Doorbal have a new problem on their hands.

What to do with Frank and Krisztina's bodies?

[Garafalo] They put him in a truck.

And drove them to a warehouse,

Danny's warehouse, in Hialeah.

[Ferrer] They buy tarps, they buy hatchets,

they buy chainsaw, gloves.

They bring it back to the warehouse.

Danny's a little bit away in, like, an office area

and he says to Doorbal...

"You know, have at it."

[chainsaw whirring]

Doorbal began dismembering the bodies.

Doorbal just keeps on keeping on with the violent activities.

[chainsaw whirring]

It's charging him up power-wise,

feeling like he's the brawn in the operation.

Doorbal is trying to remove their heads with his chainsaw.

But it keeps getting stuck in Krisztina's hair.

So finally they give up and they just take a hatchet.

And they decapitate.

And remove the victims' hands and feet.

They wanna get rid of the parts of their body they can identify.

I was the trial judge who tried the case.

This is the most grisly...

portion of the case that I remember.

They start prying and axing the face

to get all of the teeth out.

And then they take the hands and they're...

grilling them like a barbecue,

to try to burn off the fingerprints.

[Garafalo] Lugo had a 55-gallon drum

and was trying to burn bones...

right out in front of the warehouse.

When he's doing these hyper-violent acts,

it's a taking out of revenge in a sense.

You represent that which has wronged me

and that which is what I still want or long for.

[Ferrer] They decide that they're gonna dump

the bodies in different places.

They'll put their torsos with no heads, hands or feet

into barrels and dump 'em in a drainage ditch.

And they're gonna take the hands and feet and heads

and put 'em in paint buckets

and throw those in the middle of the Everglades.

She knew that Frank and Krisztina

had been planning to go on a trip.

And she knew that they would never let the dog

just stay at the house and be alone and uncared for.

[Weiland speaking]

[Krisztina screaming]

It's very difficult to... to figure out

what gets in somebody's psyche at that point,

other than if they just really had convinced themselves

that they were nothing to them.

They didn't seem to be too concerned

that they were gonna get caught for this.

So I guess maybe Doorbal just says to himself,

well, okay, no big deal to me.

[chainsaw whirring]

[Weiland speaking]

[narrator] Attila has a bad feeling

something terrible has happened to Frank and Krisztina.

He reports their disappearance to Miami police

and tells them that Adrian and Danny

are the last people his friends were seen with.

[Kurtzogilvie] A state trooper came across

an abandoned yellow Lamborghini

out in the middle of the Everglades, out in the swamp.

Back at Miami-Dade police,

they're investigating this.

And Lieutenant Harper hears the names

Danny Lugo and Adrian Doorbal.

And it rang a bell.

He remembered those names popping up

in that bizarre kidnapping torture case

with Marc Schiller that they had looked into months earlier.

[narrator] Lieutenant Harper calls Ed Du Bois,

Marc Schiller's private investigator.

[Kurtzogilvie] He says, "What can you tell me about these two guys,

Danny and Adrian?"

Du Bois hands over

all the paperwork that he had uncovered

in his investigation of the Schiller theft.

They started to move,

to go scoop Doorbal and Lugo up.

[Ferrer] I signed a warrant.

The next day, they're back for another warrant.

And every time I'm signing a warrant,

I'm thinking, this case just gets crazier and crazier.

[police shouting indistinctly]

Over 75 officers,

including a SWAT team,

went to get Adrian Doorbal,

John Mese and Jorge Delgado.

They had search warrants for their cars,

their apartments, their warehouses,

the Sun Gym, all the businesses

they were involved in, everything.

The only person they didn't arrest that day was...

Danny Lugo.

Word had gotten out that, you know, we were looking for Danny.

So Danny, the girlfriend, Sabina,

his mother and father,

had gone to the Bahamas.

[Garafalo] We made a contact

with a task force,

FBI agents in the Bahamas,

where Danny was at a hotel.

Hey!

[Ferrer] They get international cooperation.

They flyover.

They grab Lugo at a hotel there,

bring him back.

[narrator] Police interrogate Danny Lugo and Adrian Doorbal

about Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton

and the kidnapping of Marc Schiller.

Danny blamed everything on Adrian.

"Adrian Doorbal bashed Frank in the head."

"Adrian was the one that injected Krisztina."

Doorbal never said that he injected Krisztina

with the Rompun.

The only information that he would provide is that,

well, yeah, Frank and Krisztina

came to our house that night,

but we're only there for about an hour.

And if anything bad happened to them,

I have no knowledge about that.

And then Doorbal denied having any involvement in the Schiller abduction.

He said that Danny and Jorge were the ones that abducted him.

[narrator] Lugo knows that it's all over.

So he turns on his crew to save himself.

[Ferrer] So sometimes the prosecutors have to do a deal with the devil.

Lugo knows he's looking at the death penalty.

So he decides,

if they waive the death penalty,

or tell the jury at least that I cooperated,

I will tell them where the bodies are.

So the state says, okay, we'll do that.

But the bodies are hardly a body anymore.

They've been dismembered.

He takes them to the torsos.

[Garafalo] I still remember, though, when they opened up the barrels...

and then he took the torsos out...

it was very, very sad to see something like that.

You know, you're looking and saying, geez, this is a human being.

Look what they did.

No legs, no heads, no arms, nothing.

Just to do these things that they did,

they're... they're evil people.

[Ferrer] Lugo, in his genius mind, he's thinking,

great, they're going to have bodies they can't identify.

And they're not going to be able to make a case,

but at least the jury has to be told that I cooperated.

[Garafalo] There was an anonymous call

that the heads were disposed of along Alligator Alley.

We went out there and there were buckets.

There was two buckets with heads, you know, skulls, and hands.

Then there was a bucket with a hatchet in it,

and a knife was recovered.

This was absolutely one of the most gruesome cases that I had seen.

This was just really a gruesome scene.

[reporter] The victims' bodies, found, dismembered and stuffed

into 55-gallon drums that were then thrown into South Florida canals.

The bodies of Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton:

a wealthy Hungarian couple.

I saw on the news when they had found them.

That image stays with me, you know, watching the news.

Firstly, you have answers.

Secondly, it's not the good answers.

So everything just adds to the tragedy.

It's not a car crash.

It's a murder.

Not just a murder, it's a gruesome murder.

Straight up evil.

[Franklin] I was watching the news

and all of a sudden I see mugshots

of Adrian Doorbal and Danny Lugo.

And I about fell over.

I couldn't believe it.

I was just-- I was just in total shock.

And it's made me very sad

because that was not the Adrian that I knew.

[Weiland] I mean, Lugo had the vibe he gave out.

I could imagine him

as someone who does something like this.

But Adrian, I couldn't place him in a situation like this.

Was I wrong?

Very wrong. Very, very wrong.

[narrator] The trials of Danny Lugo,

Adrian Doorbal and John Mese begin.

Jorge Delgado and Carl Weekes

had already pled guilty

and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution.

This trial was the only trial

that caused me to stop watching the news

for a while.

It's like I reached a threshold

where I was full of people suffering.

It is the most complicated case I ever handled.

It is the most disturbing.

Chop, chop, chop!

I was afraid one of the jurors was gonna throw up

when looking at the crime scene photos.

I mean, so concerned about that

that I told my bailiff to put a garbage can near her

because I really thought, you know, she might get sick.

It was the longest criminal prosecution in Miami's history.

It was the most expensive criminal prosecution in Miami's history.

The indictment itself is something like 46 counts.

It took me an hour

just to read the indictment to the jury.

There were about over a thousand exhibits

introduced into evidence.

There were about a hundred witnesses

called to testify on the stand.

Schiller comes back from Columbia to testify.

[Schiller speaking]

[Ferrer] His testimony is powerful.

It's emotional. It's impactful.

Everything he goes through,

we had jurors that were tearing up.

And then, on his way out of the courthouse,

Marc Schiller was surrounded by federal agents and arrested

for Medicare fraud.

He was convicted and sentenced to 46 months in prison.

[narrator] After just over two months of testimony

and mountains of gruesome evidence,

the jury reaches their verdicts.

I listened to those verdicts with my heart in my throat.

[judge] Daniel Lugo is guilty.

Noel Doorbal is guilty.

John Carl Mese is guilty.

[Ferrer] I sentenced Danny Lugo and Adrian Doorbal to death.

And I sentenced John Carl Mese

to 56 years in prison.

When I sentenced them to death,

I remember Lugo teared up.

Doorbal, like, smirked and turned around

to a friend of his in the audience and made a face.

And I thought... [sighs]

This guy has absolutely no limit.

[narrator] Doorbal and Lugo are sentenced to death

despite Lugo's cooperation

in locating Frank and Krisztina's remains.

Jorge Delgado and Carl Weekes each get ten years.

[Levine] This case changed me for the rest of my life.

There is not a day that goes by

that I don't think about it.

I have regrets introducing them.

From the moment it happened,

I thought to myself, oh, my God,

they died thinking that Attila did this to us.

Now, that's a thought that stayed with me.

This experience made me very aware

of what people could do to get what they want.

It made me not trust people as much.

Because if Adrian could do it, anybody could do it.

Money, I think, to them represented

all the things they just didn't have

and they felt ashamed of not having.

[groaning]

They felt inadequate and needed something

to make them feel adequate.

They also aspired to have the American Dream...

in whatever way they could get it.

There are a lot of people who are greedy out there,

but there's something that divides the people

who are willing to kill for money

from the people who will clean out your checking account.

I don't know what that distinction is, but these people had it.

Danny Lugo's death sentence was commuted to life in prison.

Adrian Doorbal still sits on death row.

One way or another, they'll both die behind bars.

These desperate men murdered and butchered two innocent people

and nearly killed a third out of pure greed.

They wanted the South Beach lifestyle.

The money, the cars, the women.

And they were willing to commit the most depraved and violent acts to get it.

Two brutal monsters, thankfully, walked away for good.

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Thanks for watching.

Good night.

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